Claims that you have black friends just sound hollow and laughable, although presumably racists don’t have many black friends. Personally, I thought that the emergence of the fact, via the club’s official statement, that Luis Suarez’s grandfather was black was quite profound, because it means he has close black ancestors (rather than many millennia ago for the majority of the rest of us). That made me think it less likely that he’d racially abuse someone, seeing as he shares that race in his DNA.